I’m running some relatively simple jobs on my LS1420, including some that I’ve sent before. At the moment, I’m having a very strange issue. My machine is definitely connected: I can use the manual move commands, and can even hit Start, which will directly run the job. But if I try to send the job, I get an error. (Problem sending data to laser, the machine may be busy or paused).
Is there any way to diagnose/log what the issue is? Some percentage of the time, it even seems to successfully send part of the job, but I can’t reproduce that consistently enough to document.
… aaand it started working again. No idea what changed. It might have been a network issue? What’s the network protocol that Lightburn uses? Is this a UDP issue?
The laser is connected to your network, not directly to the PC and
The laser’s static IP address is within the router’s DHCP range and
You haven’t prevented the router from assigning the laser’s IP address to another device
Then this happens:
Another device pops up on the network with a DHCP request
The router assigns the laser’s IP address to it
Both devices respond to network traffic to the same IP address
That situation can persist for quite some time without any symptoms, because the errors depend on the network traffic pattern. Mostly it seems to work, but sometime the laser and the other device will fail in mysterious ways.
Basically, you must tell the router to avoid the laser’s IP address, but the details depend on which router you have.
If all that seems like bafflegab, then it’s unfortunately quite likely to be the problem.
The doc explains the situation:
With a disclaimer (emphasis mine):
This makes it less likely that another device connecting to your network will automatically be given the same IP address you choose.
A lengthy discussion covers the grisly details of reserving the laser’s IP address: